It became almost a cliché to say that in the twenty-first century education cannot be based on teaching specific content and skills but should focus on “learning how to learn” and on the development of more general cognitive abilities. There are two major proposals for handling this problem. The first suggests focusing on students’ general cognitive and problem-solving skills which can then be applied in any content area. The second proposal is to develop cognitive strategies “inside” the curricular areas. The first approach thus calls for an addition of a new learning subject – “cognitive lessons” – while the second presupposes a rather radical reform of curricular teaching/learning that would assign cognitive goals to subject lessons. “Instrumental Enrichment” is analyzed as an example of a standalone cognitive program that develops such general skills as analytic perception, comparison, and classification that can then be “bridged” to curricular material. The cognitive infusion approaches propose to infuse cognitive skills into the curricular lessons without significant changes in the curricular material itself. Finally, the developmental education approach presupposes a rather radical change in the curricular material that would allow every curricular lesson to be turned into a cognitive lesson.

Since the MLA’s 2007 call to restructure the traditional two-tier L2 programmatic structure, the field has identified various challenges. Difficulties arise when, as Maxim (2009) posited, there is a disconnect between the reality of L2 programs, how program administrators engage with that reality, and the disciplinary mission. In terms of reality, research shows that L2 leaners prefer courses that focus on skill development and hope to gain sociocultural proficiency by studying abroad, that successful learners are comfortable interacting with the L2 via multimedia and online tools outside of class, and that enrollment is decreasing as programs appear disconnected from societal and labor market demands for “advanced” speakers. Some have responded by developing curricula in which upper-tier skills such as sociocultural proficiency are introduced earlier. The most promising approaches are those that adapt to evolving societal expectations to produce learners who are aware and critically reflective of the relationships between context and language use. We posit one solution as the reconceptualizaton of a unified program mission to bridge the language/content divide.

The second chapter moves from the learning crisis to IDFI programming in education. Based on the three main donors involved with primary education (World Bank, DFID, and USAID), it examines the process of designing projects in developing countries and the interventions that were financed. Early emphasis was on developing school infrastructure. Initial research, especially the school effectiveness studies, informed donor decisions on the content of their financing of education reform. There is an evolution in IDFI approach with a singular focus on developing infrastructure to a collective construction of a basket of investments for quality education based on best practice. There are commonalities across agencies in the interventions that are financed. Each of the areas contained in this basket are discussed in detail in light of the learning crisis – instructional materials, teacher training, and community mobilization. The chapter concludes by identifying the gaps in programming that have led to the learning crisis. In the final evaluation, the interorganizational reflection and systems learning that would have helped to comprehend and attend to the learning crisis did not happen.

Chapter 20: Reading Assessment. Reading assessments are used for many purposes, but all appropriate uses of assessment begin from an understanding of the reading construct, an awareness of the development of reading abilities, and an effort to represent the construct in assessment tasks. This chapter first presents a straightforward framework that categorizes the many uses and purposes for assessment. The chapter then outlines and describes a number of major options, though not a comprehensive set, under each category in the assessment framework. These assessment options are equally applicable in both L1 and L2 contexts, though important L2 tests and assessment practices are noted where relevant. The third section considers a number of reading-assessment innovations and challenges. The fourth section addresses two further important issues for reading assessment: Consequences of reading assessment and teacher training for reading assessment. The chapter closes with implications for teachers and for instruction.

Chapter 9: Social Contexts of Reading. This chapter focuses on the many social contexts in which reading is carried out and in which reading develops. We learn to read within a family unit, in various school settings (and their associated goals, expectations, and opportunities), in various classrooms, and in interaction with specific teachers and student peers. Students are also influenced by the wider social and cultural expectations of political, religious, ethnic, economic, and social institutions. Social contexts set the stage for successful reading within the first year of life, and language knowledge, as well as beginning reading, is profoundly shaped in the first five years of life. L2 reading, as it often is learned in childhood or adolescence, is also strongly shaped by social contexts in which learning to read is carried out. Four specific issues include the needs for effective teacher training, the status of minority language instruction in K-12 schools, advanced L2 reading instruction, and most importantly, the role of language and reading exposure throughout a learner’s lifetime. The chapter concludes with implications for instruction.

The chapter explores how plurilingualism potentially influences young children's perspectival cognition, including understandings of false belief and implications for cooperative science inquiry.

The theoretical contextualization of undergraduate research is undertaken, on the one hand, within the framework of research-based learning (RBL). RBL is experiencing an enormous expansion worldwide in the context of teacher training and is, on the other hand, located within the professionalization discourse, namely that teacher education must focus on the professional activity as a teacher and help to develop it further. For example, the central aspects of teachers’ professional knowledge consist of a combination of “pedagogical content knowledge,” “general pedagogical knowledge,” “curriculum knowledge,” and “subject matter content knowledge” within the disciplines. Accordingly, university education must enable students to acquire deep and flexible knowledge in order to create the necessary basis for successful teaching/learning processes and enable students to find professional solutions to complex pedagogical problems and social challenges, such as reducing educational inequality and establishing educational justice.

Undergraduate research needs to be rooted in a specific disciplinary context, such as geography. Depending on the disciplinary tradition, training students as researchers requires a research-based curriculum that involves students in the research process instead of merely confronting them with the outcome of previous research. Walkington (2019) stresses that significant progress is already visible in the field, yet myriad aspects, such as mentoring, the role of research in teacher training, or research skills and employability require further attention. This chapter takea up Willison and O’Regan’s (2007) inclusive definition of student research as “[…] a continuum of knowledge production, from knowledge new to the learner to knowledge new to humankind, moving from the commonly known, to the commonly not known, to the totally unknown.” The chapter explores possible curricular architectures for geography undergraduate programs followed by a brief discussion of geography’s special formats to foster undergraduate research.

This chapter brings together the arguments covered in the previous eight chapters and returns to the title of the book: concepts, contexts and challenges. The concepts that need to be kept in mind for the future of mobile learning are explored, along with the impact of the context on language teaching and learning through mobile technologies. Along with these, the current and prospective challenges are also investigated, with the aim of seeing how these challenges can be overcome to make the most of what MALL can be. The potential future paths in which mobile learning may be considered to evolve will also be discussed here, not in terms of evolving technologies but in terms of directions that the field seems to be headed and how these can relate to meaningful research and practice that is needed in both the shorter and longer term.

Preservice native-speaking instructors of Chinese and Japanese must in a number of ways transform their thought and behavior as regards language and culture generally, and language learning and language teaching specifically. Issues typically requiring transformation include the US educational system and American classroom culture, the role of the teacher, the Act–Fact distinction, the primacy of spoken language, transcription systems, writing systems, culture, curriculum, and the concept of lifelong language learning. Activities that can serve as “disorienting dilemmas” include direct information, instructors’ language learning and study abroad experiences, and observation of and taking classes in familiar and unfamiliar languages taught by master teachers. Whether an individual instructor is willing or able to be transformed ultimately depends on the individual. However, if given the appropriate training and allowed sufficient time to reflect on their training experiences, the majority of preservice instructors are able to effect transformations in their thinking and behavior so that they are able, in turn, to transform their students.

This chapter introduces Dar al-ʿUlum, a hybrid school founded in 1872 to train students from top religious schools such as al-Azhar to teach primary school subjects and Arabic within state-run civil schools. First, it locates Dar al-ʿUlum within the history of Egyptian teacher training. It explains how Dar al-ʿUlum formalised and expanded the path followed by reform-minded shaykhs since the early nineteenth century by providing a crash course in the subjects and habitus of the Egyptian civil school system, alongside advanced training in how to apply their specialist knowledge of Arabic and Islamic disciplines to teaching in a civil school. It then presents Dar al-ʿUlum as a hybrid institution whose mission was to bring religious knowledge into the civil system. As a result, it was structured as a civil school, but its curriculum and faculty combined civil and religious elements and expertise. The chapter demonstrates that Dar al-ʿUlum was founded not only because of state efforts to control and put Islamic knowledge to work, but also because of the value many Egyptians placed in the authentic connection to Egypt’s past provided by Islamic knowledge.

Around 400 AD, Augustine of Hippo wrote De catechizandis rudibus, which teaches others how to address non-Christians interested in converting to the religion. Written in a time of increasing state hostility to non-Christians, the text has been used to study ‘coercive conversions’ to Christianity. However, this elides the fact that a North African convert had a choice between two increasingly hostile Christian factions: the one Augustine belonged to, or that of the better established rival bishops Augustine labelled ‘Donatist’. This chapter argues that the treatise should be seen as an attempt by Augustine to use the frame of teacher training as a means of strengthening control over minor clergy in a context of episcopal conflict. De catechizandis rudibus does not address converts directly, but instead the minor clergy who taught them. This focus, in particular on managing their affect (and disciplining the insufficiently cheerful), fits with Augustine’s faction having less social power in comparison to the Donatists at the time of writing. Instead, Augustine used his considerable rhetorical prowess in this treatise to prevent minor clergy from becoming demoralised (or defecting to the opposing bishops) during the conflict.